*First off, I’d like to say I’m reviewing this way later than everyone else, but I have recently platinum’d the game and I wanted to write something about it because I was so enamored. Also, there are minor spoilers for the game here, but only from the first few hours, but just be warned if you haven't played and want it all to be a surprise.

Story (Early Story Spoilers Ahead):

I’d like to start off here because of how interesting and different the story is in Ni No Kuni compared to other JRPGs. You aren’t a brooding, angsty, and unwilling 20 something character with some mysterious past. In Ni No Kuni you are Oliver, a 13 year-old boy living in a 50s style town called Motorville. A horrible accident causes Oliver’s mother to become ill and pass away and in Oliver’s sadness he meets a fairy who introduces him with a way to save his mother in his world by traveling to a new one. To be honest I had to look up how old Oliver was online. If they told you in the game I wasn’t paying attention, but to be honest I though he was somewhere between 9 and 12 because of some of his mannerisms. Perhaps this is a Japanese and Western culture difference and because my nephew is actually 13 now, but his seemingly younger façade is actually a truly welcome characterization. The world around him, although gorgeous, is rife with people in need of help and monsters who must be defeated, and his cheerful and hopeful disposition actually counteracts so many of the plot’s sad and dissonant moments. Since the game is also about the relationship between a mother and a son, there is no true to form love interest side story. Sure, he meets new friends and goes on side quests should you choose to undertake them, but even when it seems his mission is falling by the wayside there he is to remind you that you are here for one reason: to reunite a mourning son with his mother. It’s a story that, having both parents I can’t relate to as well as love lost or something of the sort, but it reaches for my heart in a powerful way nonetheless.

Presentation:

In the beginning of the game you are in Motorville, a small section of a suburban neighborhood filled with cheerful faces and pleasant music to follow your daily routine of picking up milk and groceries for mom, or meeting your friend Phil. The town is very pretty and the design choices are fitting seeing as some of the games cutscenes are in anime. The game is decidedly cartoonish in look to support this and the result is a 3D version of Studio Ghibli magic. The first time I left Motorville to go to Ni No Kuni I was taken aback. I even texted my girlfriend to remark “This is the most gorgeous world map I’ve ever seen.” It’s not gorgeous because it’s realistic as many games have tried to convey. It’s beauty is in it’s simplicity. Bright greens and yellows greet you as your tiny character moves around battling enemies you see minding their own business in a field. The grass even moves and blows in the wind as you travel and battles are set in different types of locales as you move to different areas of terrain. Fighting in a field will show your battle in a grassy flatland with hills in the distance, in the desert will be a plot of orange sand with a backdrop of dunes and so on. Enemies are also cool. In Ni No Kuni they are called familiars, which are most like pokemon. Many of them lend themselves to real life animal counterparts and their names are mostly very creative puns or play on words (something the game does a lot even outside of familiars and made me laugh often) It’s beauty and detail only make it that much more fun to explore and learn about the world.

The score is an incredibly entertaining mix of songs done entirely by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. The sweeping, horn heavy main world music and the equally quiet and creepy sections that accompany dungeons are all exquisitely done and if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself whistling the tune with the game while you explore the world on foot or on the back of your faithful dragon.

Gameplay:

I’ll lead with this: the battle system in Ni No Kuni is very fun and very engaging. That said, there are a few gripes I have with it that I noticed throughout my over 84 hour play through. I’ll start with the good though, by saying the familiars you catch are fun to use with a vast array of abilities. You’ll mostly use these guys to fight. Even though you can use their human counterparts as well, you’ll probably only end up switching to them to steal, heal, or use certain magic attacks.

The battle system is a mix of Pokemon and more action oriented JRPGs like the Tales series and requires your attention. You won’t be able to just spam the attack command unless your team is seriously over powered.

Familiars level up also, and most (except one you get for completing a side quest battle arena) have three forms. You can use special drops associated with your familiar’s sign (Sun, Star, Moon, or Planet) to metamorphose them to their next form. Each familiar has a different set of learnable tricks that include physical, elemental and support moves. They all also have different maximum levels for each stage. You don’t have to have your familiars at max level to metamorphose and all will be able to do so beforehand, but waiting yields stronger next stage familiars with better stats. Every time you metamorphose a familiar it also goes back to level 1. The stats do go down significantly, but the upside is when they reach the same level they were at the previous stage they will be much stronger and probably learn better tricks and as long as you do 1 or 2 at a time you can still fight enemies later in the game to gain levels quickly using your other familiars. The final stage of a familiar will make you chose between two forms. Here’s where the game gets a little involved. Choosing one over another usually comes with different trick sets but also different overall stats. Some may have higher attack and lower defense overall but start with the opposite. It’s hard to tell and playing this game without a wiki would probably result in a decent amount of frustration in finding out your familiars are weaker than you expected when you reach the end game, which ramps up the difficulty a bit. If you love to learn the ins and outs of a game yourself, I say definitely go for it and find out what works for you, otherwise I’d advise using the IGN wiki or googling the familiars with the stats you’d like in your party to avoid frustration later on in the game when you realize your healer has a terrible magic stat.

Another minor problem I have is the battle menu system. Switching between characters is easy and choosing familiars pauses the action, but choosing commands uses a wheel-like menu that requires you to choose what you want using only left and right commands (the up and down are quick commands to switch between your human character and your most recently used familiar of the three in your party). To clarify what I mean is if you have a game with six menu options, and moving the cursor to select one doesn’t pause the action, would you rather have three rows side by side or one long row of six options so you have to click 5 times instead of a max of 3? It’s not a huge issue and it only really started to bother me when the larger battles became longer and more involved, but it’s noticeable when you’d like to defend from an enemy’s devastating AOE attack and you have to scrub over so many times you miss the window of opportunity to do so. That said, it never made me scream in frustration or throw my controller, it was just a minor gripe that made me have to heal more times than I might have otherwise had to. To reiterate in case all this whining deterred you, it’s still very much a fun battle system and this is a seriously minor issue that I’m sure won’t bother many other people.

Related to the battle system, familiars also all have three equipment slots, but they aren’t all the same adding yet another layer to the cake that is your strategy in this game. The equipment types you can equip vary by species and often they require compromise. Have a character with a really high attack and a crappy defense? Well they can’t equip shields, only badges that raise defense by much less. Would you rather play a defensive game? Well there are tank familiars with terrible attack and amazing defense that can’t actually carry any type of weapon but can use multiple kinds of defense boosting equips. It all boils down to how you’d like to play the game. Personally, I like to be quick and offensive, so my familiars tended to be low on the defense side and I’d make sure to have decent healers on hand. Some people may want to take a more defensive route and heal less, which is equally viable and one of the reasons this game seems so thought out and polished. There are also elemental resistances and weaknesses as with any game of this type, but they can even change over time with metamorphoses making a non researched team either a disappointing bunch of weaklings or a surprisingly strong powerhouse.

The dungeons you go through are diverse but never offer much in the way of exploration outside of a few dead ends for treasure collecting and 100% exploration accomplishments. Don’t expect to get lost going through any of these or spend hours on end looking for the boss. There are usually saves at the beginning and the end of these sections, which are enough to give you some idea of how short they are. A few end game sections have three save points, but I wish all the dungeons were as fleshed out as the last few areas are.

Another aspect of the game is an alchemy system, where you can create your own items from existing ingredients in your bag. You can make anything from specific weapons, armor, and accessories to help your familiars in battle, you finite healing items and snacks to upgrade your familiar’s stats. These are cool additions but I found myself only actually using it to obtain a few healing items and then in post game to obtain the alchemy trophy. If you do a lot of the side quests and level your characters enough, you’ll rarely need more items and equipment than you are given or can buy, so there’s no need to hunt down rare ingredients for hours on end.

There are also a few puzzles in the game, some of which are story related and some that aren’t, but the story ones are pretty easy (minus a semi-frustrating “friendship test”) and these are honestly few and far between. Some spells in the game are also learned and used once and aren’t really useful after the fact, and I wish I had the option to reorganize my list of spells, but again this is a minor issue.

Verdict:

Overall Ni No Kuni is a great game with a fantastic story that is a true and welcome departure from the normal JRPG routine. The main character Oliver is a likeable, although sometimes overshadowed character and the story keeps you interested and invested in this new world. The battle system is well thought out and engaging, barring some minor menu issues and familiars are diverse, eclectic, and fun as hell to discover and catch. The amazing musical score and beautiful art design will have you smiling all the way through and you’ll be happy enough to play some of the post game and repeat your boss encounters (yes, it’s a post game quest) to relive some of those moments with a fully fleshed out and leveled up team and new found knowledge of the world you’re in and just how big it really is.

+ A different tale and protagonist for a JRPG

+ Beautiful both in visuals and sound

+ Battle system is fun and engaging

+ Long story (~40hrs) easily doubles in playtime if going for platinum

Score: (9/10)

Thanks for reading and let me know what you guys thought of the game or if this review helped at all if you haven't played in the game in the comments.